DEV Community

Cover image for πŸ‘¨πŸ½β€πŸŽ¨ The art of frontend freelancing - My journey
Daniel Lima
Daniel Lima

Posted on

πŸ‘¨πŸ½β€πŸŽ¨ The art of frontend freelancing - My journey

If you just want to code, this article isn't for you.

Be a freelancer is more than just go to platforms, get a job and start to code.

And, in my opinion, be a developer is much more than just code and chill.

In this article i will show a new way to get new clients and to make your career as a freelancer grow up.

My experience as a freelancer

I did freelances job for 2 years. I was not just a freelancer ( i worked as a Software Developer too), but 1/3 of my money at this time came from those jobs. So at this time i learned how to get new clients and how to make then happy with the product πŸ˜„.

I founded a marketing and websites agency, called Β©Vetrin. At begin was just me. myself and I doing everything. And at the end of my journey at this company I was with 4 people working with me at the agency.

Freelances Plataform

Image description

It's important to treat your freelance work like a real business and not just as a developer. This means taking a 'holistic' approach to your work by focusing on marketing, improving your clients' experiences, and always looking to grow and scale.

While freelancing platforms like Workana can be a great way to find clients, I have never got lucky with then ( and i tried a lot ). But never succeed.


Success as a freelancer takes time, effort, and dedication. But by treating your work like a real business and focusing on marketing and growth, you can create a sustainable and fulfilling career for yourself.



But if you want to just develop and don't care about "marketing" and "company stuffs", a good start is to search about freelance agencies, show some projects in a portfolio .

How to find clients tho ?

All my clients were from indications and marketing adds that I launched for my service. Is good to be focused on a specific niche tho.

What niche ? How do i start tho ?

I started my freelance wallet with doctors that need websites ( for example ). And a part of my job was found those potential clients and approach then with problems.

After storing telling about problems I bring solutions and sell it for then.

But you can approach and start for any niche. Everybody needs a website or a solution to improve the routine. You need just to learn about "how to be a good seller".

Think like a company.

πŸ’¨ Running adds, approach clients. Move !

Have a portfolio is a duty. You need it !

Why should i pay for you if i don't know if you really can do it for me ?

And if you show a niche portfolio for your client he will felling a FOMO ( Fear Of Messing Out ). So you must and want induce this feeling in then.

In each niche the approach technique could be different, but a general and easy way is: go at instagram profile, if the account have not a website on bio, congrats, you have a potential lead.

If the lead already have a website ( and if you can do better ) you can approach tho.

Running adds on TikTok and Facebook Ads for Instagram is a good ideia too ! Do it if you want, a simple video with a good Call To Action ( CTA ) should bring you a lot of leads.

After start and why i stopped.

The beginning is the hardest part. After conclude some jobs and make some clients happy, they will telling about you for their friends, you could have a coupon too to stimulate that ( there are some techniques for that ).

All things were looking fine, the team was growing. But, it is not scalable. Or if it is I did not found the way of scaling these kind of agency.

Today with AI revolution, maybe could be easier to scaling those jobs. But have clients is a hard work, especially if you have to talk with then every single day.

So I just sell my part of company and quit.

In this part I felt that I needed to study more and spend more time with my hard skills. But now i understand that i'm a life long learning :)

Top comments (0)